NEW JERSEY & CO.

NEW JERSEY & CO.; New EcoComplex Is All Kinds of Green

By GEORGE JAMES

Published: April 22, 2001

COLUMBUS—
ABOUT a thousand feet from a landfill in this Burlington County hamlet is a large building that is green in more ways than one. Its color is a deep forest green but it is green in an ecological sense as well, having been built, for example, with beams that were created from recycled metal and sun panels that provide natural heating and light.

More important, its purpose is to serve as a research center and incubator for companies tackling environmental problems like reducing methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in that way spur economic development.

The New Jersey EcoComplex -- which is being dedicated tomorrow at ceremonies attended by state officials, including Acting Governor Donald DiFrancesco -- is being trumpeted by its creators as the nation's first statewide environmental research and technology development center.

''We need to be able to provide assistance to entrepreneurs who are focusing on environmental problems,'' said Harry W. Janes, a biochemist with Rutgers' Cook College who serves as director. ''And we believe New Jersey is sort of a microcosm of the nation in that, because of our industrial base and because of our high population density, we will see environmental challenges first.''

Two companies that are experimenting with landfill gas, Acrion Technologies Inc., based in Cleveland, and Carbozyme Inc., which recently relocated from Houston, have taken up residence in the two-and- a-half-story, 32,000-square-foot facility.

A joint venture of Rutgers' New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, Stevens Institute of Technology and the Burlington County Board of Chosen Freeholders, the center is also developing environmental education programs including courses for children in kindergarten through eighth grade and workshops for teachers.

The center is an extension of the Agricultural Experiment Station concept, Dr. Janes said. The stations were created in the late 1800's by the federal government and based at state universities, like Rutgers, to provide research and information for small farmers.

''We need to have a clean environment but we also need industry,'' Dr. Janes said.

''What we can do at the state university,'' he added, ''is we can begin working with the state and with industry to find solutions to those problems that are providing negative impacts onto our environment. And that's kind of why we began developing the EcoComplex along the same lines as agricultural experiment stations but more towards environmental issues.''

The EcoCenter cost $6 million to build, of which $5 million came from the State Higher Education Facility Trust Fund and $1 million from Burlington County.

On one side of a large atrium is a 120-seat auditorium and two adjacent 30-seat classrooms with partitions that can be removed so the rooms can become part of the auditorium. On the other side are offices, labs and other work space. The second floor on one end of the building houses the offices of the landfill, the Burlington County Resource Recovery Center. The EcoCenter is working with the Resource Recovery Center in a landfill mining project to see what material can be reprocessed.

Other projects include doing research for NASA on growing and processing food and recycling waste on long space flights, exploring how to recycle material dredged from the Delaware River, and exploring with the state Department of Environmental Protection the quality of some watersheds.

Michael Trachtenberg, chief executive of Carbozyme Inc., which is trying to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by by attaching enzymes to artificial membranes, said he knew of no other environmental research and technology development center like the EcoCenter in the country.

''And I'm aware of lots of incubators that universities have and development centers,'' Mr. Trachtenberg said. ''I think this one is pretty unique. And the emphasis on developing green technologies is very much on the cutting edge.''

One way the center is special, he said, is that it provides laboratory and development space that allows an entrepreneur to perform a large-scale demonstration of his technology.

''The ability to go from a laboratory scale into a field test unit is one of the real keys in moving technology from just a bright idea,'' Mr. Trachtenberg said.

Acrion, for example, has built a model of a processing unit, three stories high, in a large room at the center, to experiment with separating landfill gas into pure methane, which can be used as fuel, and pure carbon dioxide, which will be tested as a way to enhance the growth of plants in the Burlington County Research and Demonstration Greenhouse. The greenhouse, a half mile away, has been in operation five years and is part of the EcoCenter.

Lawrence A. Siwajek, senior engineer for Acrion, said the Ohio company chose to test its process at this complex in New Jersey because of the large space for scale-up demonstration, proximity to the landfill and the technical assistance available from scientists at Rutgers and Stevens.

''It's just the right place to conduct this study,'' Mr. Siwajek said. ''We've done research like this in the laboratory and we've operated units very similar to this, but this one can be operated with continuous landfill gas. So it's the real thing.''

Dr. Janes said that once companies have gone from lab testing to commercial use -- what he calls ''the valley of death'' where many business fail -- they would move out of the EcoCenter.

''You get a technology to a point where if you have it working at a reputable facility,'' Dr. Janes said, ''people are going to come in and see it and hopefully going to be more likely to invest and buy and license it.''

So where others see garbage when they look at the landfill in the EcoCenter's backyard, Dr. Janes sees business opportunity combined with a chance to safeguard the environment.

''Because of the fact we're here at a landfill,'' he said, ''we have a real-world lab to which these companies can come and experiment.''